This study intends to construct a general theory linking adolescent social alienation, drug abuse, and counter-culture religious cults. Preliminary work indicates that the decline of the Protestant ethic and the emergence of bureaucratic vocational and educational institutions has led to wide-spread adolescent anomie, communal deprivation and identity confusion. Drugs are used because they seem to alleviate these problems. Continued drug use leads to an exacerbation of these problems and creates new ones. Counter-culture religions rehabilitate as they provide more effective solutions to the tensions underlying drug use and as they define these solutions as inconsistent with drug use. The solutions different cults provide vary in their implications for social integration and personality development. Our study is attempting to verify our preliminary conclusions concerning etiology, and to work out these comparative correlations. We are using participant observation techniques and the grounded theory methodology of Glaser and Strauss.